


Pippi Breaks Up the Clouds

by trashsshi



Category: Pippi Långstrump | Pippi Longstocking Series - Astrid Lindgren
Genre: Canon Compliant, Gen, Personification
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-16
Updated: 2020-10-16
Packaged: 2021-03-08 17:13:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 952
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27040279
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/trashsshi/pseuds/trashsshi
Summary: Pippi is perturbed by the clouds when she goes shopping. She is also bothered by a boy. She wishes she had a baton, but she'll handle it, even without one.
Collections: FandomWeekly (2019-2020) Writing Challenge on Dreamwidth





	Pippi Breaks Up the Clouds

It was a cloudy day. A very cloudy day. The clouds were like furry frowning eyebrows, thick and heavy and foreboding. Pippi flung open the door of Villekulla Cottage and stepped outside in her big black shoes and big cartwheel hat. Pippi used the hat for shade. Pippi also used the hat as a wearable umbrella when rain decided to descend all of a sudden. The brim was wide and useful.

“Move along there,” Pippi called to the clouds. She had been to England over the sea with her father (Captain Ephraim Longstocking, terror of the seas), where constables in their funny blue suits said “Move along there” and were always listened to. The clouds didn’t listen to Pippi. “It must be because I don’t have a baton,” said Pippi, and added it to the shopping list.

She went to the market. The other people in the market were wearing raincoats to be safe, for they didn’t have a big useful cartwheel hat like Pippi did. Their colourful clothes showed blurrily through. Those who didn’t have raincoats carried umbrellas under their arms. The shopkeepers were safe under their awnings and didn’t wear or carry anything.

“This won’t do,” said Pippi impatiently. The clouds would think they could rain with impunity when they saw everyone guarded against them. Or they might be in a pranking sort of mood, and gang up with the wind to send people’s umbrellas rolling along the road. They might send Pippi’s hat rolling along too. That wouldn’t do at all.

Botild, the woman who looked after the general merchandise store, had a face with creases and crumples all over it, like the brown paper she used to wrap things. Pippi smiled at her very hard so that she would smile back, adding more interesting creases all over her brown-paper face. “Aren’t you a ray of sunshine!” said Botild to Pippi, smiling back so that mountains were mapped over her face.

“I want to buy brown eggs in vinegar, treacle bread, apples and a baton,” said Pippi.

“A baton, dear?”

“A policeman’s baton,” explained Pippi.

“That’s the one thing we don’t have,” said Botild ruefully. “But we have everything else you want.”

“That’s all right,” said Pippi. “Can’t be helped.”

Botild wrapped the treacle bread with brown paper and Pippi was careful to lower the jar of brown eggs in vinegar into her basket gently. She put the loaf on top and the apples around the jar, so nothing would get squashed.

She visited all the shops in turn, but none of them stocked a baton. But she was able to buy ribbons for her shoes and a bonnet for Mr Nelson, so it was overall a fruitful shopping trip. The only problem was that she couldn’t shoo the clouds away with ribbons for shoes, or Mr Nelson’s new bonnet, or brown eggs in vinegar, or the apples she’d bought for her horse, or the treacle loaf she meant to share with Tommy and Annika. The clouds were rumbling like a menacing pack of dogs, and although her cartwheel hat would be enough to keep her dry, the brim wasn’t wide enough to include her basket of shopping in its protection. She was regretting buying funny tea-cosies instead of a baton when she’d been in England with her father. But Pippi did not regret anything for long.

Elak, a nasty older boy who liked picking on people, blocked Pippi’s path, intending to trip her into the gutter. Pippi sidestepped him, but because her shoes were so large, the tip of her shoe bumped against his outstretched foot and she stumbled. She caught the basket before it could fall. The apples had been thrown up into the air when she stumbled, but she juggled with them one-handed (her basket she held in her other hand) and returned them safely to the basket.

Since Pippi was unscathed and not a single apple had rolled into the gutter, Elak was disgruntled. To relieve his feelings, he taunted Pippi, “Why don’t you go to school, little girl? Is it because you’re too stupid?”

Pippi turned her nose up at him. Then she turned her chin up at him. “I learn more when left to my own devices, and broaden my mind better when I travel with my father. Sitting at a desk and memorising pluttification is hardly useful to me.”

“It’s not pluttification, it’s multiplication!” Elak jeered gleefully.

“If that’s what you like to call it,” Pippi said loftily. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, you’re in my way.”

But Elak refused to make way for her, waving his arms and jumping in front of her while shouting, “Can you even say ‘multiplication’? Or is your tongue stupid too? Come on, say ‘multiplication’!” Since he refused to make way for her, Pippi had no choice but to catch hold of both his elbows with her hands and fling him up, high in the air. She used all her strength, because she wanted to continue peacefully on her way without worrying about Elak falling back into her path. High, high was Elak flung, so high that he made a hole in the clouds.

“Aren’t you a ray of sunshine!” said Pippi to the beam of sunlight that smiled down at her through the hole in the clouds. She tipped her hat to it, and the beam broadened, the clouds parting for it to shine through. Perhaps they were afraid Pippi would make more holes in them. “That’s right, move along there now,” nodded Pippi to the clouds. They dispersed obediently, and Pippi walked home, watching the shopkeepers folding back their awnings to let the sun in, and the people around her taking off their raincoats. 


End file.
